You Are the One You've Been Waiting For

Applying Internal Family Systems to Intimate Relationships

By: Richard Schwartz PhD

Narrated by: Martin LaGrande, Mike Berlak

A groundbreaking approach for practicing courageous love and resilient intimacy—from the creator of Internal Family Systems therapy

Do loving relationships end because couples lack communication skills, struggle to empathize, and fail to accommodate each other’s needs? That’s a common belief within and outside of the therapeutic world… but what if it’s all wrong? In You Are the One You’ve Been Waiting For, Dr. Richard Schwartz, the celebrated founder of Internal Family Systems (IFS) therapy, offers a new way—a path toward courageous love that replaces the striving, dependent, and disconnected approach to solving relationship challenges.

The breakthrough realization of IFS is that our psyche contains multiple parts, each with a life of its own. Most problems in relationships arise because we unknowingly burden our partner with the task of caring for our disowned and unloved parts. In this book, you’ll discover essential insights and tools to foster healthy dialogue with your parts and your partner, including:

• How to recognize and disarm the cultural assumptions that create shame, guilt, and isolation in relationships
• The Three Projects—why we fool ourselves into thinking we must change our partner, change ourselves, or give up on true intimacy
• Finding and Healing Exiles—transforming the way our most vulnerable parts influence the way we treat each other
• How to reorient relationship conflicts to help each of us grow toward the Self—the center of our clarity and wisdom
• Courageous Love—building resilient intimacy with each other and our parts to create healthy, lasting partnerships

“No one can do the work of healing our orphaned parts for us,” says Dr. Schwartz. “Yet when we begin with Self-leadership, a relationship can become a safe place in which we help each other heal and grow.” Here is an invaluable guide for therapists and laypersons alike to promote connection, trust, and understanding—within yourself and with the one you love.

©2023 Richard Schwartz (P)2023 Sounds True

Critic reviews

“This profound and readable book provides clear guidelines for therapists and clients alike. In ways that complement my own work, clients learn how to unload the cultural and family burdens that block intimacy by keeping them locked in rigid gender roles. Therapists learn an empowering and practical process for treating couples. I enthusiastically recommend this book to anyone serious about improving relationships in the world today!”—Terrence Real, author of I Don’t Want to Talk about It, How Can I Get Through to You?, and The New Rules of Marriage

“This highly original book offers critical new insights into obstacles to the dance of intimacy. Most of us have inner exiled parts that carry burdens of shame and abandonment from our past. These interfere with our capacity for intimacy. Dick Schwartz shows us how to use the exiles our partners trigger in us to find and heal the source—our original attachment injuries. This releases our capacity to be fully alive in relationships.”—Bessel A. van der Kolk, MD, medical director, the Trauma Center, and professor of psychiatry, Boston University School of Medicine

“You Are the One You’ve Been Waiting For is my relationship bible! The IFS principles and methods shared in this book have offered me direct access to ‘courageous love’ and a greater connection to my husband than I ever thought possible. The book is on my bedside table, and I turn to it as a nightly ritual.”—Gabby Bernstein, #1 New York Times bestselling author of The Universe Has Your Back

Excellent guidelines!

This was very timely for me. Just began a new relationship and I can already see where my parts are fitting in. I loved the idea of trailheads and their invitation to be curious. All of this healing work has been amazing, and it's all practiced in relationships.

A new concept

Seeing self in a different way and expressing it to a partner seems to feel right.

A unique and very helpful approach for couples/relationships.

I’m a PhD, LMFT. This is an excellent approach for couples therapy, and I’m also impressed that couples could get some very initial framing and help from reading this book together, as long as they are both very open to it, and very willing to try out, experiment with, and implement the ideas as outlined in the book. And I would guess most, perhaps the vast majority, of couples will need a therapist to help them through this process. Over the past 10 years, IFS has become one of the most popular leading approaches to individual as well as relationship, couple, family therapy work in the United States. It’s been amazing to see how popular this has become. I’ve known of the ideas for 30 years, and I think the cultural conditions of our nation and the state of relationships, couples and families is incredibly ripe for this kind of intervention.
To me, IFS is bridging, the very best of: Jungian, cognitive, narrative, systemic and relational theory. I love that IFS has social justice underpinning to it and the sociocultural explanations of couple relationships early in the book are superb. I would like to see IFS more deeply integrative of affective/emotional and somatic work.

Clear examples of parts work

I read the van der Kolk book but wasn't sure how to implement. This book demonstrates how to implement.Should we passionately pursue or dreams or be more zen? Neither. We should listen to our exiles as soon as they speak up, before they need to shout or send a hasty email. Improves intimate and work relationships.

ifs

i love that there are prompts/ exercises/ reflection points. i also listened to no bad parts and having all the examples in this book, as they apply actively in partnership, was a helpful next step.

Vital & important

I wish everyone had access to this stuff! It’s a collection of recipes and antidotes that could serve so many relationships.

Spot on! Extremely valuable lessons..

I am a counsellor working with IFS with individuals. Highly recommend reading this book for everyone…

Really really ridiculously good relating

This is the best academic resource I’ve listened to on intimacy and relating. The only thing I’ve found better are experiential practices, which aren’t available through a book. We’ll done!

Great IFS Book for Couples

I really enjoyed this book. IFS is a wonderful approach. This should be required reading fro all relationships.

Excellent! May the Self be with you!

Very enlightening and useful approach to cultivating lasting intimacy and connection in all your relationships!